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Depelsha McGruder was balled up in bed, crying as she worried how she could protect her two young boys, 7 and 4, in the face of police violence against unarmed black males. Though a Harvard MBA and senior vice president at Viacom, the Brooklyn resident felt powerless and alone.

Using social media, she reached out for support. In the process, she founded Moms of Black Boys United, a nonprofit which in less than 2 years has mobilized meetings in over 20 U.S. cities.

Depelsha shares her story in her own words.

I kept seeing multiple killings by police of black boys and men in the news. In July 2016, there were two back-to-back killings.

There have been so many stories. Police say, “Well I thought he had a gun” or “I was afraid for my life.”

Someone lost their son, husband, father, brother, or nephew.

I was in fear, frustration, anger, confusion and needed to connect with people who'd understand.

I went on Facebook and created Moms of Black Boys United, inviting 30 friends. I stepped away for five minutes. When I came back, it had grown to 150 people and kept ticking up: 500 in an hour, then 2,000. I went to the grocery store: 4,000. I got back home: 7,000. By the time I went to bed -- within 12 hours since starting the group – 21,000 moms from all around the country had joined.

We're more than 183,000 moms from around the country and world. We've evolved into two nonprofit organizations. Within 3 months we incorporated the first, M.O.B.B. United. Two months later, we created M.O.B.B. for Social Change, the sister advocacy organization, to influence policy at the federal, state, and local levels.

I never imagined I would start something with a group of strangers on Facebook, a scary proposition for someone like me, who's an introvert.

The linear television world is one-way communication. You decide what you want to program using research. The only way you know if they watched is through ratings. You don't really know that you're connecting.

On social media, you're getting real time feedback from thousands of people. It's a two-way communication with the audience.

Someone I didn't know said we need to get on a conference call, plan a march, plan something. She's now the head of membership and fundraising.

We were unsure what people wanted when the Facebook group started, so we tried different things. Should we have health and wellness information? Should we mobilize marches? Should we have economic information? We were throwing things against the wall to see what stuck.

Social media is an instant focus group. In television, we often did focus groups, but you’re only talking to maybe 12 to 15 people at a time in five to six different cities, less than 100 people.

I applied that same model to M.O.B.B. United because we listen to what people are saying. We see what they're posting and what gets the most likes, the most comments, the most traction, to figure out where to focus our efforts.

We're creating content, programs, trying to see what moms will find useful. If we see people are talking about the school-to-prison pipeline, then we're going to book a webinar speaker on that topic.

We have a group of moms we call the “Call Center.” We give them a script. They're calling police chiefs, they're calling city council members, they're calling school principals, depending on the incident. What's come out of these conversations from police forces, from school systems is they don't get adequate training on how to be sensitive to diversity issues.

Now we're developing programs on cultural sensitivity training that we take into schools and police forces that don't have a diverse population. We can expand beyond preaching to the choir.

We're developing media campaigns on the fact that we're moms. Everyone has a mom. Everyone can relate to a mom's love for her child.

I don't blame the media for showing the horrible images. It's a positive thing that media is being used to illuminate these types of killings, which are not new. They’ve been happening throughout time. Before, everyone didn't have a camera on their cellphone to capture it. Now people can see for themselves.

The problem is the problem. The people who were committing the wrong is the problem, not the people who are distributing the content that makes people aware of it.

Media has the power to change minds, to make people aware, to have conversations and to bring people together.

Making a narrative of the experiences that our sons have -- the daily misperceptions, discrimination, second-guessing, automatic assumptions of aggression or criminality. By having them tell their own stories -- but also hearing it from the moms -- will resonate with a broader audience in a way that you wouldn't otherwise get if you didn't have the power of media.

It's not really about a black man being killed. That’s part of what we're talking about, but not the only thing. We're talking about the daily experience of black males in America.

By the time Philando Castile was stopped for a broken traffic light that ended in his death, he had been stopped more than 40 times. That's the daily experience of a black male in America.

Any time they go anywhere, they're viewed with suspicion. By the time my son is 12 -- even 10 -- if he walks down the street to the store, a police officer will be looking at him: “Where are you going?” “Why do you have money?” “Who said you could be here?”

Their very existence is questioned -- whether they deserve to be here, to be alive, to be in this space. I've heard so many stories from moms and sons.

If our sons don't respond in the exact correct way with deference and apologize for their very being, it can end in death. That just doesn't make any sense. I want to collect as many of those stories as possible -- the daily experience of a black male -- that could lead to the possibility of mistaken identity and being killed by a police officer. It's how they have to navigate the world just to avoid these kinds of scenarios.

I’m a writer, consultant, and educator who helps people and businesses make sense of today’s tumultuous media landscape.

I’ve worked for Univision, Telemundo, TV Azteca, and CBS, as well as several digital startups. Currently, I’m the Managing Director of the Cledor Grou...